You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times a politician, and they all do it, has told you that his administration, and government as a whole is going to be “transparent”. It will be the most transparent in decades.
Heck. A dinner party full of people won’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times.
If you haven’t noticed, the small town of Ware and Pulaski Street in Ware specifically is seeing residents bounce off of various walls over the sudden and unexpected news that Paul Shanley, the defrocked priest, who served 12 years in prison for the rape of a boy in Newton back in the 80s is living on their street.
The fact that there are now five people in the Sex Offender Registry I will let go liviing on the same street? The fact that there are 20 offenders in the same town-- does that tell you anything?Transparency?
You mean to say there was no one anywhere in state government, or the Department of Corrections who thought to themselves “hey this is a high profile guy. He is not a danger. But we should probably get ahead of this and tell the residents that something is going to happen to make them a bit edgy.”
When you own a home and want to build a huge addition, most town zoning laws require that you contact the abbutter and the abbutter to the abbutter.
I would say this is a pretty huge addition.
That the neighbors were basically told by the media that a high profile sex offender was coming is a bit strange. Hey it’s a bit embarrassing.
Now State Senator Anne Gobi is going to be the lead on this. She is expected to file legislation that will require sex offenders to have GPS devices as a precaution as part of their probation. Shanley will be on probation for ten years.
But, it is vitally important that lawmakers include a revamping of the system of notifications. We all concede that there would be nothing that the neighborhood could do to stop it, but they might have been more accepting, I say “might” had they had more than a couple of hours notice.
That no one thought about that as part of best practices and protocols I just don’t understand.
Transparency?
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)